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star wars - Was the Millennium Falcon too slow?


I've always been puzzled by the speeds of space craft in Star Wars. The Millennium Falcon was said to travel at "point 5 beyond the speed of light" - which I guess is 1.5c:



HAN: She'll make point five beyond the speed of light. She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid. I've added some special modifications myself.



And it was said by Han Solo to be the fastest ship in the fleet.



HAN: Look. I want you to take her. I mean it. Take her. You need all the help you can get. She's the fastest ship in the fleet.




But at that speed it will take years to travel between solar systems.


Is this a mistake in the Star Wars universe?



Answer



Yes. This is a mistake in the Star Wars universe. George Lucas had no understanding of space travel or physics. Which is why his starfighters swoop about the way World War II fighter planes did.


In modern explanation the "past lightspeed" bit has been retconned away. Instead there are the hyperdrive classes with a reverse scale. The higher the number the slower the ship. So a Class 1 hyperdrive is one of the fastest, but the Millennium Falcon has a 0.5 class hyperdrive. Twice as fast as a Class 1. Just how fast a Class 1 is is never really explained.


Though if you really want to go into it, get some of the role-playing books. They'll have charts for travel between star systems (and possibly distances). You may be able to figure out how fast a class 1 is supposed to be from that.


More information: Hyperdrive on Wikia


[edit] Okay this is a ridiculously rough calculation. I went and pulled out my old WEG RPG book and looked at the space travel section. It didn't have a map or distances or anything -- one of them does, but I don't have the time to find it now -- but it did make this statement:



Even with a well traveled hyperspace route the fastest ships, such as the Millennium Falcon, would take several months to traverse the whole diameter of the galaxy.




Elsewhere the Galaxy was quoted as being 120,000 light years in diameter. Using this we can make a really rough guess at how fast the Falcon is, and from that, what the classes really mean. So we'll assume "several" is 6 months. Using that we can find that a class 1/2 hyperdrive would travel at about 28 light years per hour. So a class one's speed is about 14 light years per hour.


I'll find that map and do a better one later. I'll note that the book does say that well traveled hyperspace routes, such as trade routes, can take significantly less time than less traveled routes. Why that would be, I dunno, but it hints that there is more going on to hyperspace than simply traveling faster than light. [/edit]


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